Michael Jackson had died and we had just received word of it a few hours before. We spent the entire morning before class trying to get in touch with our contacts for our articles while simultaneously listening to/watching MJ music videos on MCM. At Mini-Europe that afternoon, Gareth was in a really good mood, probably because he had finally gotten his visa squared away to allow him to work in the US this coming fall. I was paying my accidental tribute to the King of Pop with Billie Jean stuck in my head on repeat. A giant orange turtle molested us at the start of the tour. Nicole got weirded out by me singing while hiding in the hedgerow. We got all the questions about the EU correct in the kids-level quiz at the end! Overall a win! Except MJ dying. That was depressing.
We did, however, have major issues with a few important parts of the next dozen hours or so. For starters, we had tickets to the Flo Rida concert that night. Supposedly. They'd never come in the mail--the post office claimed they didn't have them and the ticket office claimed they'd sent them by regular mail (meaning there's no tracking number). Our tickets were nowhere to be found, though! Normally I wouldn't care too much because I don't like rap/hip hop music, but it was a €35 ticket. Plus I kindof (*shame*) wanted to see them? Just because...who goes to see Flo Rida in Belgium?! We do.
After class we marched right up to the Ancienne Belgique--the venue for the concert--and were ready to demand that they either refund us our money or print us new tickets. Lo and behold, they had just received our tickets by return mail not long before. Apparently we had put down the wrong zip code on the address. Tickets in hand, we were ready to go for that night!
Unfortunately, the next day was still up in the air becaue there were no functioning printers at our disposal. We don't have one at the apartment. The printers in the IPC were jammed or just not working. No internet cafés near the Grand Place had printers. And what did we need printers for? To print our bus tickets to Amsterdam of course. Oh, and our hotel reservation. Not exactly necessary.
Finally, at long last we found a hole-in-the-wall café with two computers and a printer where we spent less than 10 minutes printing off all of our necessary papers. Ah, how good that felt to finally be done with everything! Tickets and reservations all in two hours!
The concert that night was, in short, wonderful. I reiterate, I can't stand that music normally. But this was just so much fun. Flo Rida's a great performer and the Belgians were really funny singing along to all the songs in their varied European accents. The DJ before the concert was really good in my opinion, and he played a mix of Michael Jackson music to which the crowd applauded and cheered. Flo Rida even gave the late great a small tribute toward the end of his concert, which I greatly appreciated. It would have been better if he'd broken out in his own version of Beat It, but the silence was nice, too.
We went to bed that night exhausted but happy. For who knows what reason I was up until 4am, though. Still can't remember why...maybe that's when I was blogging and emailing contacts for my article? Regardless it was a late night to be matched by an early morning the next day.
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